Learning

You Gotta Laugh: An Unexpected Email From A Former Boss Asking Me A Question

/ Ally Bean / 244 Comments

And then the absurd happened.

I received an email from a former boss, someone I hadn’t heard from in years.

Call me prescient but when I saw her name on the email I instantly flashed back to working for this woman who, while sweet enough, was a flake. She could not, would not, get to a point directly, instead dithering around about what she wanted to say.

Come to find out she has not changed.

• • •

In the first part of her email former boss talked about how she and her husband had retired. They’d moved to another state, built a house on 10+ acres, and were raising farm animals, mostly as pets.

Groovy.

She continued by explaining that she’d thought of me when trying to remember some events that happened decades ago in a bar we’d gone to after work. She wanted to know if I remembered the names of any of the bar shots we drank, specifically the ones made with Baileys Irish Cream.

And of course true to her personality, she didn’t tell me why she wanted to know about these drinks, just that she’d thought of me.

• • •

Now kids I’m sure I won’t shock you when I admit that there have been many alcoholic beverages in my life and while I like to think of myself as a helpful person, on this particular subject I was hampered by time and my indifference to Baileys Irish Cream.

Don’t love it, don’t hate it.

I could only remember two drinks.

One was a NUTTY IRISHMAN [recipe here] made with Baileys + Frangelico. The other was a B-52 [recipe here] made with Baileys + Grand Marnier + Kahlua. So I replied to former boss’s email telling her what I remembered.

• • •

Without any context in her email I’d assumed former boss was having a party and was looking for a signature drink for her event. But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth, something I learned when she emailed back thanking me for my help and further explaining herself.

You see, and let me clue you in that you’ll be surprised to learn, the reason former boss wanted to know about these bar shots is that one of her alpacas, named Bailey, had given birth.

Former boss thought it’d be clever to name the newborn, a girl, after one of those Baileys Irish Cream bar shots we’d enjoyed years ago.

Because of course she did.

• • •

Unforeseen as this email exchange was, there was logic involved, something former boss was not known for when I worked for her. And much to my continued amazement former boss did get back to me saying she liked the name Bea, as in reference to the B-52 bar shots, so she was going with that name.

She also promised to send a photo of Bea as soon as she got around to taking one, which considering this is former boss I figure said picture will arrive many years hence when former boss thinks of me again.

‘Ya know? 

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Have you ever had a boss from way back when get in touch with you? If so, why? Were you flattered to be remembered? 

Do you like Baileys Irish Cream? If so, do you like any particular drink made with it?

If you were living on a farm raising animals as pets which animals would you raise?

~ ~ • ~ ~

Because It’s Funny: When Life Imitates A Movie + Determining YOUR Sense Of Humor

/ Ally Bean / 238 Comments

A STORY IN WHICH I’M REMINDED OF A MOVIE

You, my gentle readers and kind lurkers, may remember that last summer I mentioned our neighbor bought an electric robotic lawnmower that when programmed cuts the grass making perfectly straight, amazingly pretty, latticework lines across his yard.

I nicknamed the machine Yertle because as it wanders around it looks like a large slow-moving turtle.

[Also because I like to name things.]

At the time I mentioned Yertle a few commenters asked: How do you stop someone from stealing it?

We now know that the answer to this question is: YOU DON’T. 

Yes, someone driving by midday saw Yertle out in the front yard, stopped, hopped out of his black pick-up truck, and kidnapped stole Yertle. Due to the angles on neighbors’ doorbell cameras, the theft was caught on video but the license number on the truck and the face of the thief weren’t.

However, there was one thing the thief didn’t consider when he stole a machine that is programmed using 22 satellites in ye olde heavens above. You see, once Yertle was unceremoniously lifted over the property line, with a hat tip to ET, Yertle phoned home.

Literally.

Immediately.

Thereby alerting our neighbor that Yertle had been swiped and that he was resting in the back of a pick-up truck that was speeding into the countryside.

So our neighbor called the Sheriff’s Department to tell them what had been stolen and to look for a black pick-up truck. Plus our neighbor, using his cell phone that tracks Yertle, was able to tell the Sheriff’s Department Yertle’s current exact location as the thief drove down the road.

Then our neighbor waited.

Welp, apparently the thief figured out that Yertle had a GPS tracking device, so before the Sheriff caught up with the truck Yertle was found*, abandoned unharmed by the side of the road.

Yertle came home no worse for the wear, a victor over the forces of evil, and as you can imagine, the talk of the ‘hood.

A QUIZ TO DETERMINE YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR

I stumbled over this questionnaire, Test Your Humor Style. It’s based on Rod A. Martin, Ph.D.’s academic idea that humor can be divided into four different types.

After answering 32 easy questions, I learned that my humor styles, succinctly defined, in descending order are:

  • Self-enhancing [97th percentile], meaning I look on the funny absurd side of things;
  • Affiliative [73rd percentile], meaning I enjoy sharing amusing stories to make people laugh;
  • Self-defeating [64th percentile], meaning that I laugh along with others when being made fun of; and lastly
  • Aggressive [17th percentile], meaning I don’t use humor to tease, put down, or manipulate people.

There’s more to the definitions of each humor style so instead of writing in depth, I’ll share the following taken directly from my results page.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What’s new in your neighborhood? Spill the tea!

Ever reminded of a movie by something that happened in real life?

What’s your favorite funny movie?

Do you think the four types of humor make sense?

If you took the quiz, what is your primary style of humor?

~ ~ • ~ ~

* I wrote this post yesterday morning then learned the rest of the story last night. Come to find out after rescuing Yertle the Sheriffs did catch up with the black pick-up truck. The two men in it claimed that the only reason they’d taken Yertle was that it was by the trash cans on trash day and they thought it was a motorized toy car being thrown out. Uh huh.

My Rambling Report On The Color Green + My Art Project For Zazzy’s Challenge

/ Ally Bean / 240 Comments

My Rambling Report On The Color Green

a spunky hosta growing among the stones underneath the deck

Well paint me green and call me a cucumber!

Someone on social media said the above and I got laughing.

Then I realized that I’ve been inexplicably drawn to the color green lately, seeing the color everywhere I turn. It’s summer here so it’s outside my window, but I’ve also found myself drawn to it inside the house.

Bought some drapes, white background with a vertical vine pattern in a color called Pine.

Bought some oval place mats in a color called Thyme.

Bought some bath mats in a color called Celadon.

[Even looked at, but didn’t buy, nail polish in a shade called Happily Evergreen After.]

Yep, I’m in my green phase now.

image via @grantdraws on IG

So what does the color green mean?

• According to Sensational COLOR green is “the most common color in the natural world, and it’s second only to blue as the most common favorite color.”

While green can be associated with money & envy, what I’m enjoying about green is its calming influence that symbolically represents freshness and progress.

• According to the Crayola Crayons wikipedia page, there are 22 Standard shades of green and many Speciality shades. Most of the crayons have basic predictable names but a few have unusual names such as: Inchworm, Asparagus, Fern, & Shamrock. My conclusion is that green means variety.

• An article from The Cleveland Clinic about chakras explains that there are 7 “places in your body where energy — in yoga terms, prana — congregates or is concentrated.”  

The chakra associated with green is your heart chakra that’s located, somewhat predictably, in the center of your chest. Keeping your heart chakra open is important if you’re to maintain balance.

made me laugh so here it is

“It ain’t easy being green.” 

Kermit nailed it when he shared his burden of being green, like leaves, in his mellow soulful song “Bein’ Green” [HERE].

Is there anyone among us who doesn’t understand that blending in with other ordinary things, instead of standing out like splashy sparkles in the water, can be frustrating?

Of course he goes on to say that green can be cool and friendly-like which is where I’ll end this scintillating, marginally informative, blog post brought to you by the Universe nudging me to notice the color green.

And who can argue with that‽

• ❇️ •

My Art Project For Zazzy

Zazzy of the blog zazamataz has challenged us, her bloggy friends, to create some art. In her post [HERE] she shares a video in which an artist shows you how to use water color paints, a roll of painter’s tape, and a black Sharpie to manifest art.

The video, like Zazzy, is encouraging so I decided to see what I could do, adapting as I went along.

First I bought some watercolor paints at the grocery store, forgetting to buy a few extra paint brushes. Then I found notebook paper in my desk drawer, discovered a roll of masking tape in the kitchen junk drawer, decided to use Q-tips in place of paintbrushes, and substituted a pencil, then an ink pen, in place of the Sharpie I didn’t have.

In other words I used what I could find around here.

Below is my masterpiece.

• ❇️ •

Questions of the Day

Do you like the color green? Where do you see green in your life? Do you see it literally and/or do you use the word figuratively?

Do you *MOO* when you see a cow thereby announcing its existence? If not, what’s wrong with you?

Considering I’m not an artist by training or inclination, how do you like my artwork? Are you willing to try to create some art, just to see what happens when you try?

• • ❇️ • •

Implausible But True: Learning About Gnus & Answering 10 Questions

/ Ally Bean / 256 Comments

Subtitled: A Look At How Seamlessly One Thing Can Lead To Another

Photo of a gnu by titiamatta via Pixabay

“In Scrabble putting the GNU in the wrong place won’t get you the points you need,” said I.

I’d lost to Zen-Den in a close game and I felt like explaining myself, assessing where I’d gone wrong. He, however, burst out laughing, finding my statement hilarious, resulting in a question.

“Do you even know what a gnu is?” 

“No, not really,”  said I.

So off I went to research GNUS because I like to learn and because I thought this topic might be decent blog post fodder.

And it was, just not in the way I’d anticipated.

• 😜 •

So first here’s what I learned about GNUS, using bullet points to summarize the information in this article. Then I’ll share the surprising place where I ended up.

  • Gnus are the largest of all antelopes and live in Africa, the largest herds being in Tanzania and Kenya.
  • Gnus are also known as Wildebeests.
  • Gnus is pronounced like “news” making the ‘G’ as useless as the ‘G’ in lasagne.
  • There are two species: the black, also called white-tailed, and the blue, also called common.
  • Baby gnus, called calves, arrive in February and March so we’re in gnu birthing season right now and how exciting is that?
  • Gnus are herbivores who can become dinner for spotted hyenas, lions, cheetahs and African wild dogs.
  • A group of gnus is an implausibility according to James Lipton known to many from Inside the Actors Studio fame.

• 🤓 •

Well once I learned this last point of about gnus I had an epiphany. I knew I had to find Lipton’s famous questions based the Bernard Pivot adaptation of the Proust Questionnaire.

Then, of course, I had to answer Lipton’s 10 questions because to a personal blogger a list of questions is manna from heaven. The questions are as follows with my answers immediately after each one:

1.  What is your favorite word?  

Snazzy

2.  What is your least favorite word?  

Should

3.  What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Going for a walk, seeing what I see, letting my mind wander, quietly pondering what’s really going on around and within me

4.  What turns you off?

Hypocrisy

5.  What is your favorite curse word?

Fu@k

 6.  What sound or noise do you love?

The sound leaves make when the wind blows through the trees, resulting in a quiet rustle that is the epitome of mellow

7.  What sound or noise do you hate?

The high-pitched whirring of a poorly maintained machine that is the aural manifestation of anxiety

8.  What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Interior design

9.  What profession would you not like to do?

Trash collector

10.  If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Welcome! Your favorite table is waiting over here on the deck with a good view of the ocean. Now, are you still drinking Sauvignon Blanc? Will you need to see a menu today?

• 😇 •

Questions Of The Day

When’s the last time you played Scrabble? Did you win?

What’s the last subject you researched? If you write a blog, did you share what you learned?

Back in the day did you ever watch Inside the Actors Studio?

Will you be answering Lipton’s 10 questions?

• 🤔 •